No Beans About It – Declare your Garden Victory!

No Beans About It Declare Your Garden Victory!

Especially in seasons when you’ve had to fight lots of garden battles, it is essential that you loudly DECLARE YOUR GARDEN VICTORY!  Some seasons the garden just does what it’s meant to do, and you get to thoroughly immerse  yourself in the beauty and luscious production of your garden.  Other seasons, it’s one battle after another.  One past summer my dirt garden had infestations of first white flies, then squash bugs, then some kind of worm that absolutely destroyed EVERYTHING it touched, and finally when I managed to fight off the demons long enough to get productive tomatoes (GARDEN VICTORY), they started off with Blossom End Rot, which I quickly cured with eggshells (GARDEN VICTORY).  That season’s garden had been a struggle.  But each morning when I went out to check out what was happening around the garden, my heart and soul exclaimed the GARDEN VICTORY that I was producing beans!  We LOVE beans, and in the rental that we lived in at that time, we had just had a hard time keeping our little garden going.  So the fact that enough bean plants had survived long enough to actually be producing beans (FINALLY) was VERY EXCITING!   We also had Nasturtiums that were peaking through even though I’d planed them late hoping to salvage what was left of our squash plants with the added bonus that they produce really pretty flowers – a first for our garden that had been primarily focused on edible produce (GARDEN VICTORY).  One of our favorite veggies is yellow squash, so I had truly hoped to nurse at least one of my squash plants to health so that we could have some nice meals with steamed squash and beans.  The point is this, I had a lot of things that I could have focused on that might have tempted me to be depressed, but I also had things in the garden that encouraged me that I was a fighter, and I would win against the nature that sought to destroy my produce (GARDEN VICTORY)!   Finding ways to fight nature in a way that least disturbs it but still encourages the production of healthy foods and medicinals truly makes me happy!  I don’t like depending on big pharma or medical institutions to care for the health of my family, so the more I can make myself, the less I need to turn to them.  And every year I conquer a new challenging onslaught, I get a little wiser on how to start, and my family and I get a little closer to taking our health into our own hands (ABSOLUTE GARDEN VICTORY).

So that year that I dealt with all those things, we still produced beans, and microgreens, and spearmint, and oregano, and milk thistle, and lemon balm!  That year I also learned that cinnamon wards off many things from the garden (even mosquito bites when you apply to skin).  I also learned that a soap water spray applied consistently can rid your garden of whiteflies, and it’s really not that hard in a small garden to get rid of worms that are attached to the backs of your leaves (putting another notch in the belt on reasons we needed chickens one day!).  I learned that year to plant nasturtiums around my squash, and a host of other things to make the preparations for my next years’ gardens more concise.  Overall, I learned a lot, and was better equipped to be more productive the next time I tried!  This is how master gardeners begin.  I am by no means a master gardener even still, but I am willing to try and I do enjoy the spoils of my learning (MAJOR GARDEN VICTORY)!